You bring the bootleg sensors, I'll bring the moonshine?

No seriously though, if you find somewhere to put the cab and they're also willing to have a DDR EX, let me know. I want to buy one and put it somewhere just so that there's one that's close by and playable, now that Bill's closest EX is at Paradise.

I'm very interested in any kind of Bemani tournament in Washington to be honest. If you are interested, I could run a Pop'n Music tournament or something of the sorts on the side. I'm actually interested in seeing if we could combine this with a Tetris the GrandMaster tournament on the same day. Bill gave me the go ahead to run one of those, and I think it would be neat to have a "tournament day" of sorts at Acme. Mid July sounds good, but I wouldn't try and decide the date right now until we at least figure out if there's interest.

I'd personally also like to see a Max2 tournament but that's just me. Max2 results in much closer matches and close matches are IMO what makes tournaments awesome. You could always use Cynic's DDREvo tournament formula which mixes up ITG and DDR in matches.

EDIT: You know...I had a really neat idea involving this stuff. Maybe a "tournament day" of sorts at Acme where tournaments are held for multiple games. If any of you know the prominent Blazblue players in the area let's get a hold of them. Having a massive series of tournaments at Acme and running an all-day event would be really neat. I think it could get a massive audience and at the very least generate hype for the event. PM me or AIM me if you wanna talk about it!

That's how every decent sized arcade tournament I've attended/participated in has gone. Indiana tourneys, GOM, ITG Regionals, etc. Hell, even the small scale 5th mix std/maniac tourney we had in Ft. Wayne in like 06 had me AAAing Broken My Heart on some kid who B'd it. The other top 3 seeds did the same to the lower competition. That tends to be how first rounds go in a single elim tourney.

Rarely in a ddr/itg tourney is there a really level playing field, even incorporating mods. You can throw wave and mini and .5x in, the steps don't change. 8x Max3 is almost as AAable for most upper players as it is on 1x.

Something just hit me about this entire thread. You're from the Midwest, another very good player and friend is a recent transplant from the East coast. I'm an assimilated New Yorker myself, and I have to make the observation that Seattle is pretty much the most mellow city ever, second only to maybe Portland. There is an almost infuriating lack of urgency here, and most natives, I've found, are not inherently ultra driven competitive people. (There are obvious exceptions to this; HI BLUESS ) This may be a generalization, but to me it probably explains why in other cities, people fail out of a tournament and strive to be better, thus continuing to play and enter, whereas in Seattle they enter one, don't have fun, and give up and do something else that is, or resign themselves to just being dance game groupies forever.

 This is not the Midwest and it's not the East coast, it is Seattle, and when running a tournament in Seattle you need to factor what a player in Seattle wants out of a tournament. It seems like most people in this area would prefer, at least initially, an artificially evened playing field. If you'll note in my initial response, I'm cool with entering a tournament I won't have fun entering just to support the community; it seems to me, though, that the vast majority of the community has spoken in favor of less difficult stepcharts in tournaments. If I was the only one who thought 13s were a bad idea, I wouldn't even be arguing.

Nobody cares if you AAA the song and they got a B. They do care if they literally can't play it because it's so unreadable or difficult for them that they don't know where to start or are physically incapable of doing so. That's why difficulty caps or a lower level tournament are desirable.

I don't actually play ITG, but if it's at a date/time I can make it, I might show up. I've been at Acme (once), and don't they also have a Guitar Hero room? (Basically, don't count me in but I might surprise everyone, including myself!)

@Laura: agree entirely with your last paragraph. AAA vs B is just gg for the person with the B but selecting a song that the other player can't play because it's so damn hard is kind of a dick move. Yes, you win, but is it really necessary to win by that much? Ideally people just don't do it in the first place, but when that fails you need rules.

I like living here because of how mellow people are, and would agree with most of your generalizations.

edit: a two-tiered tournament sounds like a possible idea if this gets more than 10 people total...

Acme doesn't have a Guitar Hero room.... it has party rooms which we used at the last tournament there (and played IIDX, Pop'n in there), but since then they've gotten stringy with room rentals.

If the event got big enough, I could see what Tony and I could do about MAYBE fronting some of the money for room rental so there could be some IIDX/Taiko/whatever else... I hesitate to become some kind of cash cow but I really REALLY want to see good things for this community.

Of course, we could also just all go over to my place afterwards and play some stuff.

BTW, Zecro, I don't think I've ever talked/posted with you before. Welcome!

This is in Washington?  There may be a chance I can come.

  Like I said before, a lot of my intention here is to fire up the community a bit and get people playing more and posting more up here. Also to provide a decent tournament for the decent-good players around here because no one else seems to be willing to organize it. I'm sure you'll all argue to the death with me but it is my opinion that ITG2 is basically in every way superior to any DDR because of its less nazi-ish timing system, more linear difficulty scale, more thoughtful step charts, higher top end difficulties and better sounding 10+s (not beat your face against the synthesizer Max songs), hands, rolls, better mods, better pads usually, and above all, custom songs and USB interface. So far as the difficulty of ITG compared to DDR goes, I personally find a lot of the fun from the physical challenge of playing the hard stuff, along with the challenge of timing and sense of personal accomplishment from bettering my scores by more than a great or two. Hell I've lost 60 lbs on max2 nonstops then challenge courses then ITG songs and now custom songs; it sounds like you guys just need to take the next 6-8 weeks until this thing would go down to practice. I'd be willing to bet 2 or 3 times a week at Acme with your own USB cards and songs would prove most of you to be comparable to the best of competition around here.

As far as other tournaments go, I'll ask when I meet with an events coordinator about possily having other things going also, though I don't know how that'll go over. More likely if we wanted other things we would have to front the cost for a room rental, which I might be willing to throw down on if we had a really really good turnout, but we won't really know that for a little bit. I vote we have an unofficial freestyle competition after =) Grab some random audience members to judge, then you'd really see some action. Anyway though, yes, I will if I get permission for this and once a date is decided be making sure that if you play DDR in the area between when the date is decided and the date itself you will know that this tournament exists and these forums are the place to go to be involved in the community.

By the way thanks for all the input! I appreciate all of it =)

The first rounds will most likely not be single-elimination, they will likely be '4man stratified double-round robin' as I am calling it. Being that I am a mathematician by trade, I am taking steps to ensure that especially the lower end brackets don't leave anyone feeling like they got gipped. If we have an unusually high turnout this might have to be modified but right now this sounded like the best solution.


Indeed it is sir, and indeed you should. Acme bowl is by the Southcenter Mall in Tukwila about 20-30min south of Seattle.

I'm not going to argue you on whether or not an ITG tournament with hard songs would be fun for the local players anymore. The turnout at your tournament will decide that for you. I AM going to have to argue you on this point though.

The reason I don't think some of the super hard songs are fair for "tournament play" is that I legitimately believe that there's a difficulty cutoff where some people literally can't improve past that certain point. Like I've stated before, I have health problems. I've been playing for eight years, at various points five-six times a week with custom songs for multiple hours a day, and while my timing consistently improves, my stamina can't go past a certain point because I get palpitations. My husband has knee problems and athsma, so he, too, can't physically improve past a certain point. KevinDDR has GERD and probably a whole bunch of other stuff, too. And, let's not forget the part where to "become competition for the best players here" you need to actually LIKE PLAYING the hard charts.

Nobody is saying DDR is inferior to ITG. We are saying that ITG is a fine medium, but that the higher level charts are not our thing. Nobody here has a problem with hands, the timing system, the better sounding songs, etc etc. We ARE saying that given 6, 8, 12, or 52 weeks, we don't want to have the case be that the one guy who likes 13s takes the fun away for the rest of us by just hammering away at them.

A friend made an interesting point though. I guess in her state, "house rules" was that if someone picks a song you don't want to play, you can opt to just forfeit, but as part of their ruleset, if you pick something and fail it you auto lose your match, so basically it would look like:

*Out of state player with something to prove picks determinatrextrememaxsummer*
*WA player who calls bullshit forfeits and has fun talking to friends for 2 minutes while out of state player with something to prove wins his match by hammering away at 13 footer*

This ruleset would, in my opinion, at least encourage people to be a little more reasonable - if you can beat me on an 11 I'd have fun playing, I'd think you'd rather do that and tire me out than let me just say "Ok you get this point, now have fun playing your shitty chart while I have fun NOT playing it."

And just when I thought all of the ITG RoXoRs fanboys had disappeared.... 

Anyway, no matter what the tournament is, I'll do whatever I can here on the site to get people to go to it. While we may not like the type, I know we will still support anyone's efforts to run whatever type of tournament they plan. If these new people can come and post here about the tournament, that'd be great and give the scene more people too (since we're getting low in numbers!).

I think Laura's hit a good point; as well as a handful of our top players leaving/not playing anymore, I can't think of too many people who stayed, kept playing, and don't have health issues.  My knee had me on the verge of quitting permanently, same for her and Kevin with their respective issues.  Rediscovering the fun of playing 6-9s (ITG is woefully lacking in thoughtful 6-8s and most of the 9s are all identical, most of the effort put into the game was from Chris Foy, who almost exclusively worked on Expert 10+'s) has made me want to play more than that obligatory set each time I go to Acme (I was going almost exclusively for pop'n and DM, then bought a pop'n machine around the time DM went in for repair, so I haven't really been back in months).  Going back to almost exclusive Expert play will take me out of the game again.  10's are fine, 11's are fine if not in rapid succession, then after that, it becomes a very stupid thing for me to try (though I probably still will form time to time).  Laura fought her way up to a few 10's awhile ago, but it really does put her on the edge of hospitalization to do so.  Even back in the day, GPF Lith had a bad knee IIRC, but in the early days of Extreme, he was the top player in the nation.

I also don't see what's less "nazi-ish" about ITG's timing system.  Or how fighting for an extra excellent or two over your ITG record is better than fighting for an extra great over your DDR record.  With the great precision comes greater variation in your score, so it's actually a whole lot more frustrating to go up or down 10e than 2g when repeating a song.  And again, the effort that went into ITG was not evenly spread, many hard charts are uninspired and identical, many expert 9's use the same exact patterns, and double mode is a joke (it's fun to pass the crazy charts, but trying to get good scores is a pointless effort) because they handed it off to their least skilled file makers.  It's not to badmouth ITG or anything, they took on a huge task and tackled what they thought people would want them to tackle first.  I played the game a lot for a very long time, but I find that Extreme still holds my interest for a lot longer, and quite a few people in the community seem to agree.

Hey, I passed an 11 once... I think...?

I'm one of the friends that Suko mentioned. I am very interested in this tournament, so I thought I'd register and give my input here.

Me, I'm super-competitive. Now, I don't mind a more casual, "let's just hang out" kind of tournament. Those are a lot of fun. I participated in the ITG2 tournament that Suko ran at University of Idaho. I really enjoyed that tournament, and I think it has a lot to do with the tournament structure.

1. It was double elimination, so one fail doesn't kill you.
2. Round sets were predetermined using a stack of cards. Each card had five songs on them. On each round, a card was randomly selected, and each player would choose one song out of the five that they didn't want to play. That left three songs to play for that round.
3. First round sets were 7-9 difficulty, and they ramped up to 9-11 for the final round. No more than one 11 was on any given card, which meant that nobody had to play an 11 if they didn't want to.

The nice thing here is that it kept everybody competitive until they reached their "peak" level. In a sense, people failed out of the tournament when they were "supposed" to. The best players still made it to the end of the tournament, but I think everybody had fun, because they knew that they wouldn't get completely dominated. I'm sure the double elimination format also played a role in that.

So I guess I would throw my vote in favor of setting a difficulty cap, say, at 10 or 11. The best players are still going to be the best players on 10s and 11s, and that's what we want.

It reminds me of the second round of that ITG2 tournament at UI. I was playing against Suko, and I recall that our first two songs were Delirium and Infection, both on Hard. I had very few 99s at this point, and I hadn't 99ed either of these songs yet. Scott completely dominates me on PA, so he was more or less certain to win this round, but he still managed to push me harder than I had ever played on these songs. I pulled a 99 on both of them, and even though he still beat me, I enjoyed that round. The better player won out in the end, but the lower difficulty squeezed it into a closer match.

So I guess that's my opinion of a difficulty cap. It allows more people to be more competitive for longer, and it increases the tendency for closer matches, but as long as the cap isn't set too low, it still allows the best players to win in the end.

(By the way, I am SO in favor of a Guitar Hero tournament.)

Talking to Jon, I realized I need to clarify:

I am NOT disagreeable to an ITG vs DDR tournament, and I'm not siding with one game over the other. Both have things I love! The ONLY thing I'm trying to say is that the Seattle community isn't into the hardest charts on ITG, which make up a very small percentage of the game. One of my very dearest friends had a close hand in making ITG, and I was one of the playtesters (I'm in the special ending and everything!) You're never going to hear me knocking the game as a whole, only saying that certain types of charts don't work well in a Seattle tournament context.


EDIT: Oh, and Rainault... welcome!

Ditto.

I have been playing 2 hour sessions, approximately 3 times a week since August of '02 and it took me 4 years (or maybe more?) to beat Max 300. I think Gerrack must be assuming people can progress as easily as he did through this game. I've heard of numerous people getting stars on ITG 11s within a year of stepping onto the dance stage, but that isn't the typical case. I don't doubt that I can reach the level Gerrack is describing, but it sure as hell won't happen in a month, or even two. Maybe in 5 or 6, but even then I'm not certain.

Gerrack, it's your tournament and you've got to make the final call. I'll try to go either way, but you did ask us for our opinions and these are them. I'm glad this conversation has been kept reasonably civilized and I hope that this thing can be something enjoyed by all.

P.S. Although I beat Rainault in the set he described above, he ended up coming out of the loser's bracket to take 1st place. No one could've seen that one coming, but that's how awesome and unpredictable our ITG2 tourny was. 



Please God, no. That air hockey table is the most distracting thing in the universe to me when I'm trying to play ITG or DDR at Acme. 

Unless you can equip it with the Cone of Silence!

Do you want to to take the "God" thing, Jon?

ha ha.

Anyway, a cone of silence for air hockey machines would be freaking awesome.

Although a point to bring up, the air hockey machine will probably be used; whether or not it's us using it. Hear me out here, if we have the air hockey machine blocked for an air hockey tournament, we can schedule our games between matches, breaks, etc  while still not having other people play on it...

Something that hasn't been addressed that needs to be:

If people disagree with the format, they may choose not to show up as a "protest."  Not really a big loss if they really thought they weren't going to have fun.  But the derivative issue stems from the fact that Acme's always been a little reluctant when it comes to the arcade - they do not call in for repairs (the players do), they've given time limits for tournaments, and Bill has, at least once or twice, thrown in prizes contingent on using Narrows over Acme (there may be a different reason for this, but we had most of the planning done when he said he wanted to change venues).  If we go through all the hassle of running a tournament and attendance is too low, it may be a nail in the coffin for Acme (and therefore ITG Dedicab) tournaments.  Not necessarily the final nail, but a nail nonetheless.

Obviously, whoever runs a tournament has final say in the rules, but it's really worth factoring in that running something that the majority of the posters are saying not to may ruin it for everyone.  I will attempt to let any players I run in to know about this thread so they can have their input too, since they may very well disagree with a lot of what's been posted so far - and the goal is to cater to as many people as possible.

Also air hockey would be best taken over by a tournament, since Acme will not let us block a machine not in use for a tournament and people will be playing all day.

Or we can temporarily move air hockey...

Hehe I wouldn't say it's been easy. I'm not a lean tall guy with big feet who can heel-toe everything on itg. I'm 5'4 and slightly overweight with small feet, so hardly so physically apt to play as you suggest, I just haul ass on the pads and can last a while now because I've practiced a lot.

Part of the point, to get people back into playing. And there are more than you think

First rounds may be 7-9. The last rounds will certainly be all difficulty, because I know people who are coming that I can challenge to summer and itll be a god damn epic duel, not some one guy gets creamed and the other pounds away. In fact I was considering as part of the final rounds having custom songs, probably including as part of the final round one of the frequently played 6+min songs like Flower Forever v2 or Heaven (well that ones like 4min, and kind of boring tbh). I do want this tournament to be fair and fun but it's not going to be a 'carebear' tournament for the last rounds, it'll be the best in the area going against each other on the hardest songs. But no, I dont intend the opening rounds to be me challenging someone I know I'm better than to a 12 I can haul ass on and they can't pass. That would just be lame I agree.

I certainly hope not... How lame would that be

Trust me I am, and if I feel that we won't draw the top-end players like I think would be willing to go and I know exist then we will modify the tournament to adjust for the difference in play-style. For now its balls to the wall ITG duels for the higher rounds =)

Bear in mind this is only the 'gauging interest' thread, everything's still in very preliminary stages and no rules or anything are final. Again, I very much appreciate everyone's input =) As for the air hockey tournament, I'm all for it; in fact I'll run it by the Acme event coordinator as a plus for us being there, though I doubt I'll be able to get it on free play also.

That's fair. I think the concern came from the suggestion that 11s in earlier rounds were acceptable, when that's about the hardest most of us will ever be able to play.

The only reason that all of us are chiming in is that we're the "old crowd" now; we've seen a lot of what does work and a LOT of what doesn't work. We've seen our friends quit these games, never to attend a tournament again, because a couple of people think One Winged Angel is the be all end all of dance games. Most of us really feel like one more "unfun" tournament could be the end of any attempts at a community. If you really feel like you know people who you can go head to head with on 13s, AND they'll come, by all means, make the final rounds harder. Some kind of epic custom chart might be a great way to make the finals fun for the spectators, too!

Gerrak, I remember you posting that you go to ACME multiple times a week. I'm going to be there tonight around 7:30, and if I see you there, maybe we can toss some idea around regarding renting one of the party rooms and having some stuff go on in there.

Wow, my group of friends and I must really suck, because out of the 6 of us, only one can pass Summer on Expert.

that sounds reasonable enough.
And I'm just throwing my interest for any kind of tournament out there. I'll be back from colorado in mid july, so I could definitely make it for now. Really I just want to see a tournament. It was sad when I heard the community out here was more or less "dead"
So this would be very nice.
Also, this is just me, but if it is possible. Freestyle tournaments are always a blast, even if they are improvised, because it's all about ACTUALLY dancing and having a good time, rather than PA. Just my thoughts. Even though freestyle is considered to be dead. They're always a lot of fun, and just silly at that. And I like silly, because I am mayor of silly town
Once again though, I'm fine with ANY type of DDR/ITG tournament

I think most of zzyzx were that good, but with most of those players in different states now (Amber's still here and maybe Mike?) I don't know anybody who both can and feels safe PLAYING Summer on Expert, letalone passing/having close matches.